A Bunch Of Singing Fools

Last night was the first rehersal for the winter production I've gotten involved with -- the story we're working with is the Russian folk tale, "The Fool of the World," and the music we're using is a mix of Russian and other Eastern European (Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc) folk and choral arrangements, some of which last night we learned orally, no score, which is always fun. I've done Russian choral concerts in the past, and that music always takes me back to childhood, sitting in a Russian or Ukrainian Orthdox church with my grandmother and grandfather, ornate gold gilt dome above, surrounded by baroquely gold-encrusted paintings and glass and icons of the saints and apostles, the air thick with rolling clouds of pungent incense and the deep, rumbling earthy voices of the men singing in complex harmony, in waves of sound almost palpable, hypnotic. I'l say one thing -- I may not have chosen that religious path, but those folks knew how to do ritual, and how.

I'd kind of forgotten how much I enjoy being around amateur production company people, even more than the bits of pro and semi-pro work in my past. There's a wide range of ages, background, and experience, and everyone is connected by a deep love for the music, for the art, that really is lovely. There's no other reason for people to be there, than love. I find I'm glad to meet so many new people who come from in and around my community, with whom I can share this love. The artistic director, producer and most of the other key folks, some of whom have been involved with this production company for more than 20 years, are brilliant and inspired, not to mention hugely artsy-crunchy-- besides your usual theatre/choral warm-ups, we start rehersals with yoga, movement, chakra work, and lastly, a long period of intense toning that is nothing less than the creation of a living temple of sound -- a co-creative improvisational ritual, and this bunch of people do it more powerfully and spontaneously than most I've seen. And it's become a household thing for me, too -- one of my Lovely Housemates is in the production (soprano, natch), and another, who has a fine arts background, is going to be doing set design and creation, so we'll be able to come back home and talk about it and practice together.

Yum. Sometimes I forget how much doing the art I love, and being surrounded by people who are doing the art they love, feeds me. This kind of collaborative artistic expression serves as a very valuable counterbalance to all the time I spend focused on individual solitary work, writing, working on the house and land. mmmm, balance. Ah-yup.

thank you for the world

Snipped from alobar:

Someone to thank for not vaporizing much of the world back in 1983.

Enormous gratitude to all who throughout history have shown blessed sanity in the face of madness. Most of them are unknown, unsung heros, and will forever remain so.

Thank you, sane ones.

more @#$%@# physical metaphors

Sunday night the Casa Chaos denizens were sitting in front of a lovely toasty fire in the hearth, doing part 2 of our Equinox work -- talking about where we needed balance, what we planned to do over the coming months to achieve that, asking one another for specific things we felt we needed to help us in our work, and so on. Hearth magic is some of the most deeply powerful work I know, if the hearth, and the home, is healthy and strong. Hearth work builds up over time, year after year. You don't say anything in front of the hearth that you don't really mean, that you don't really, truly want to happen, particularly with witnesses there...

So entering this liminal period between Equinox and Samhain, we're sitting and talking about balance, about simplifying, about using the harvest you have and carefully setting aside some of the rest for the future, before it all spoils and rots away, no use to anyone. About looking closely at what really matters, about letting go, about dealing with loss and grief. One of my Lovely Housemates burned paperwork that had to do with her dead partner, with his accident, and with the house she had bought with him just before he died, and had sold just before moving up here. Getting balance, remembering the past and looking to the future, making space, cleaning house, and preparing for a new year to come.

Immediately afterwards, one of my Lovely Housemates called me into the pantry, and we found that something (moths, I believe) had gotten in and infested some open pancake flour, and from there gotten into a whole bunch of stuff that was on all of the upper shelves, and even into some things that were sealed with plastic bags or plastic wrap -- they can eat small holes in the plastic, it seems. So there are nasty wormy squirmy vermin in all kinds of things including...oh, gods. The chocolate. Those little buggers made a beeline for every single block of chocolate in the pantry. And we had a lot, mostly commercial-sized slabs -- we're serious about chocolate hereabouts. Over 25 pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate alone, pretty much the entire supply -- white, dark, milk chocolate, including one huge 10-lb slab, now crawling with worms under the plastic wrap. Bleah. I'm not particularly squeemish, thank goodness, but I think I felt more sorrow over tossing out all that chocolate than over having had one of my major regular freelance gigs evaporate on Friday. Dammit. And one of my Lovely Housemates and myself then cleaned out the entire pantry from top to bottom, tossing out (composting) everything that was infested or just old and stale, taking inventory of everything that was left (still an awful lot of food, spices, etc).

Use it or let it go, even things of great sweetness have their time to be tossed away, harvest when it's time and plow the rest under, pay attention to what's left undone and open, lest it rot and ruin other things as well, and so on and so on. But they ATE ALL THE CHOCOLATE! Dammit.

Grrrr. *sigh* Breathe. Hmmph.

Now I need to go out and buy more chocolate.

[EDIT: my partner just came home with a bar of Newman's Own Sweet Dark Espresso organic chocolate for me. *blissful sigh* :>]